


for that which I can never atone

by presidenthomewrecker



Category: BioShock 1 & 2 (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Tenenbaum is best mom
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-11 12:51:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20546459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/presidenthomewrecker/pseuds/presidenthomewrecker
Summary: Brigid Tenenbaum is one of the few people to escape Rapture, all with six Little Sisters and a two-year-old ace in the hole in tow. But can someone that's lived through Rapture ever really escape it?





	for that which I can never atone

**Author's Note:**

> so i read the bioshock book for the first time and it gave me some Ideas
> 
> i just love Brigid so much okay??

Brigid Tenenbaum would have never believed her aching heart would lead her here.

When the pain first pricked her chest, she assumed her health was failing. After all, sleep had been harder to come by and she was eating less. Never once did she connect it to the quivering little girl on the operating table, simply known as Subject 3. She was the first child to successfully take on the ADAM slug. Brigid has no idea what has become of her now.

She sprints down the hallway of Fontaine Futuristics, one hand locked around a little girl’s wrist, the other clutching a boy physically no older than two to her breast.

One of the little girls is wailing. Brigid can’t blame them. They’re confused. _Why is Mr. Bubbles shooting at me?_ they cry. They don’t know what’s going on. They don’t understand why Mama Tenenbaum wants them to run away; they probably don’t even have a concept of “the surface” anymore.

It would’ve been cleaner, easier, if she had come to her senses before they were bonded. But she hadn’t, and now not only was she dealing with Ryan’s constables and security bots, but also the monstrous Big Daddies on her heels.

The toddler in her arms is thankfully silent. His eyes rove over his surroundings, big and glassy. Brigid couldn’t blame him. She wondered how it felt to look at the world, to be awoken from a lifelong dream and find reality so similar, yet so different.

In the twenty minutes she has held him in her arms, he has yet to speak, or laugh, or cry. He’s capable of speech; high communication skills and emotional intelligence were never high on Fontaine’s checklist for a perfect ace in the hole, but this little boy was skilled enough to at least pass for well-adjusted.

“Stop!” A constable cries. He fires a warning shot, one that sails right by Brigid’s ear. The room rings.

Suddenly everything is that much louder. The sterile smells are that much more potent. She can feel every drop of sweat on the little girl’s hand, every hair that falls from Jack’s head onto her shirt. Each sense is turning against her, threatening to turn her body inside out, but she refuses to let herself give in. Not when there’s so much on the line.

She grits her teeth, grinding them together with painful force, and wills her eyes to take in every detail. Directly ahead, there are three different corridors. She has to concentrate if she wants to take the right one.

Their only chance at escape is Ryan’s bathysphere. But which direction? Where were the ports? Where was _she_?

She swears loudly, trying to vent some frustration to get her focus back. She knows every hallway of this place. She knows these smells. She just has to access the right memories.

Her jaw goes a little lax. A right. Of course.

“Little ones!” Brigid screams. The intensity and desperation in her own voice startles her. “This way. We have no time to waste!”

Half a dozen girls. In her final salute to Rapture, she was able to steal away six scared, lost little children. Their bare feet nipped at her heels, slapping against the linoleum floors with the intensity of a stampede. It was a miracle no one had tripped.

The girls follow her without hesitation. Their trust for her comes unconditionally. After all, she has always been kind to them, and her kindness never came as conditionally as Suchong’s or Fontaine’s. If Mama was promising them a better life, they had no reason to doubt her.

By some miracle, Ryan’s bathysphere has been left unattended. Maybe because he assumed there was nothing to fear from this place. No Splicers, and—after the raid on Fontaine Fisheries—no Fontaine. Just a few harmless little girls and Tenenbaum.

“In there!” She says, pointing at the bathysphere. “We are leaving in that! I will open the door.”

She lets go of the little girl’s wrist and approaches the keypad, wincing at the sight of it. There’s no buttons or scanners, just a single syringe.

“I am sorry, little one,” she says. She winces as she jabs the needle into Jack’s arm. The sample registers, confirming Jack to be Ryan’s kin, and the bathysphere opens.

Jack does not cry, simply stares at his arm with muted interest. Does he not feel pain? Or are his senses still muddled from his time in stasis?

“Go, go, go!” She urges the girls, using her free hand to push them inside. The girls are small, but they’re still a tight fit. It breaks her heart to think that not all the girls could have fit, but it would’ve broken her heart more to get them this far only to realize that some would have to be left behind.

The security bots round the corner, beeping and whirring like mad. Their chittering bounces off the sterile walls, reminscient of demented hummingbirds.

Brigid thinks fast. The girls are an asset to Ryan, but the boy is not. In fact, he would prefer to have this child dead. However, even if it is unlikely for him to harm the girls, that’s still a risk she cannot take.

She throws her body in front of the door, turning her back on the bots to shield the boy in her arms from the spray of gunfire. A bullet pierces her shoulder. She can’t stop her screams.

“Close the door! Close the door!” she screams at no one in particular. Her legs finally fall out from under her. Her vision is overtaken by a blistering red, which slinks back to a darker red as the door shuts behind her.

The two tallest girls of the bunch, the ones who had led up the rear and kept the girls quiet back before anyone had noticed something was wrong, pore over the keypad inside.

“Arcadia,” she rasps. “Set the destination for Arcadia. It will buy us time. I will reroute the destination when I can.”

The girls nod.

“Arcadia.” One points out. She’s slightly shorter, her hair a blonde mop. Under all that blood and grime, her frock looks like it could once have been a charming light green.

The other girl, dark-haired and dressed in purple, jabs her still-quivering fingers into the right button.

The bathysphere lurches back, preparing to eject.

Brigid half-turns, watching Ryan’s goons as they gather outside the bathysphere.

The security bots lurch to a stop, beeping confusedly. The constables aren’t far behind. She can see the hatred in their eyes. Out of disgust or envy, she isn’t sure.

She offers a sardonic smile, unable to help feeling a little disappointed Ryan himself didn’t come to scream at her. She would’ve paid any price to see his monstrous face screwed up in frustration. The grand doors close, pushing them out of sight as their own room begins to fill with water.

Not even Ryan could stop them now. She cradles the toddler in her arms a little closer before a sudden thought strikes her. His name is Jack.

“Hello, little one,” she murmurs. Her voice is raw from the screaming she’s done, so much so that it hurts to talk.

He blinks up at her, staring at her with wide brown eyes. He takes after his mother, in that regard.

“Hello.” It is strange to think that he might understand her? She’s never seen such intelligence in the eyes of a creature that understood nothing.

She dares to run a thumb down his cheek, and much to her shock, his face breaks out into a grin. He reaches up a chubby arm and, through a little difficulty, stands. His little feet dig painfully into her legs, but she doesn’t protest as he extends his hand and does the same to her.

His fingers are small and grubby. And he’d already taken to the awful habit of thumbsucking, meaning his hands already have a fine layer of saliva. Brigid says nothing, merely smiles.

How is it possible that she’s already grown to love this boy?

“Mr. Bubbles!” One of the girls gasps. Her tone is lost somewhere between elated and horrified. Brigid vaults to her feet in spite of the pain, clutching Jack tightly to her chest.

Brigid doesn’t even have time to say “duck” before the Big Daddy charges the tiny bathysphere.

The bathysphere lurches, then trembles under the force of the Bouncer’s drill. The sheer force is enough to rattle her teeth.

“What’s Mr. Bubbles doing?” One of the girls cries.

Brigid struggles to hold her footing as the bathysphere lurches again. He’ll drown them all. Perhaps that is Ryan’s goal.

Brigid’s eyes dart around the tiny space. She can’t let the girls die here. She won’t.

“Girls, look away!” Brigid cries. She’d had minimal time to concoct an escape plan. She hadn’t thought, not at all. She’d had her moment of clarity, a defining second where she decided she couldn’t do this anymore, grabbed as many girls as she could, and ran like hell.

She slams her fist into the red button on the side panel, and the bathysphere shakes from the force of a firing torpedo. Thank God Ryan has so little trust in his citizens. If anyone else had been visiting Futuristics, she and the girls would surely be dead.

The torpedo strikes the Bouncer squarely in the chest, forcing him free from the bottom of the bathysphere. He sinks into the depths, the green lights of his helmet dimming until the darkness swallows him completely, the only sign he was ever there the thin cloud of blood trailing up over their heads.

Brigid takes an uncertain step backward, her calves tensing and quivering like they’re bound to give up on her at any second. She wouldn’t mind a bit of rest, but she’s already concerned the girls enough. She tries not to think about the hole in her back, or the blood trickling down her spine.

After a long, terrible moment, she closes her eyes and forces the memory out of her mind. She’s had enough death for her lifetime—and then some. She doesn’t know if she’d be able to take anymore. And so she forces herself to forget.

The buzzing in her ears dies down, and she slowly comes to her senses. A girl to her left is sobbing. Two are huddled under the benches, trying to fabricate a game of house to distract themselves. They need time, she supposes.

They all need time.

She shifts Jack onto one hip. She’s had her fair run in bathyspheres, being carted from Ryan to Fontaine and back again, and thus has had ample time study them. She’s hacked one, just to prove that she could. All it takes is a little tugging at the wiring.

She yanks a wire loose, and the lights dim on the navigation panel.

“There. Now we will be going up.” Brigid speaks to no one in particular, but when she glances behind her, she sees one of the girls watching on in fascination. Admittedly egged on, she continues, “When we breach the surface, I will tamper with the wiring again to change our direction. We will reach the shore in no time, yes?”

The girl’s eyes are wide. “Can you teach me how to do that, Mama Tenenbaum?”

Despite herself, Brigid chuckles. “Perhaps on a vending machine, yes.”

Jack wriggles in her arms, cooing as he reaches for the window. Brigid obligingly steps forward, letting him take in the sights.

The bathysphere ascends and ascends, until the twinkling lights of Rapture are dimmed by the distance.

But Jack cares not for the city under the sea. He’s not even looking at it. He flattens his chubby hands against the glass, staring at the fish above.

Even in his dreamlike trance, he has never seen the sea. No, Fontaine was very specific in his parameters. A farm. A tiny town a half hour away. A family, content but poor. No travel. No vacations. Only the compulsive need to obey.

Brigid takes him another step closer, allowing him to nearly press his face against the glass. “That is the sea, little one.” She runs her fingers through his hair to find his curls soft and baby fine.

“Do you see the fish?” She taps a single nicotine-stained fingernail to the glass, directing his attention to the schools of fish swimming by.

“Fishies…” Jack echoes, his jaw dropping in wonder. He presses a chubby finger next to Brigid’s, his mouth agape as he traces the patterns the fish swim.

That is his first word.

“Very true. Do you see that one with the pointed nose?” She points. Out of the corner of her eye, a couple of the girls edge in beside her to get a better look. “That is an Iceland catshark.”

“It doesn’t look like a cat or a shark.” One of the girls says skeptically.

Brigid chuckles. “It is not supposed to.”

And that’s how they pass the time. Brigid’s knowledge of marine biology is limited at best, but she is able to identify most of the fish that happen to swim their way.

The hours creep by. Brigid sits back on the floor to spare her aching back and legs, and a few of the younger girls nod off beside her, heads pillows in her lap.

They resort to making up stories for the fish, weaving narratives of Rosie the Rose Fish’s cheating husband, her neighbor Kitty the Blue Ling, who’s a national hero and regularly saves her common ling friends from the ghost catsharks from down the street, and all their friends in the sea.

Jack and most of the girls are asleep when they finally breach the surface. Brigid has to avert her eyes. The light is searing.

She gently moves the two girls sleeping on her lap, setting Jack on the padded bench while she goes to rewire the navigation system. The bathysphere briefly shudders, stirring the sleeping girls as it moves forward. With its speed, she expects to have a few more hours of travel before they can reach an American shore.

“You have a booboo, Mama Tenenbaum,” one of the girls says.

Brigid grasps at her shoulder, her lips forming a half-smile. She’d always known adrenaline could take away one’s pain, but she’d never experienced it herself. To imagine this bullet in her shoulder was nothing more than a dull throb, even now. She’d forgotten it was even supposed to be hurting in the first place. Fascinating.

“It is nothing.” Brigid says. She’ll worry about her injuries when she has the means to do something about them. Her eyes trace over the little girl in front of her, taking in her chestnut hair, round face, and slightly hooked nose. She can’t be older than four, one of Ryan’s newest recruits, stolen away from her parents. “What is your name, little one?”

The girl furrows her brow, in a way that ignites a deep rage in Brigid’s heart. What has she done to these children? How could she have twisted them so far beyond recognition that they have to concentrate to remember their own names?

“Lucy,” the girl finally answers.

“Lucy.” Brigid repeats, testing the name on her tongue. She opens her arms, allowing the little girl to climb into her lap. “I will keep you safe.”

The girl nods. “…Is Mr. Bubbles okay?”

Brigid hesitates. Part of her wants to lie, knowing that Rapture could never come back to haunt her, but that’s not how she wants to continue living. Suchong put too many lies in her hands; she can’t continue living like that.

“Your friend was in much pain.” Brigid explains slowly. “Andrew Ryan can no longer hurt him.”

“Oh…” Lucy shifts so she’s sitting on her hands. “That’s good.” She kicks her little feet, smeared in dirt and blood. The first thing Brigid plans to do on the surface is give each of the girls a bath. Lord knows it’s been years since any of them had one. “I miss him.”

“I know, darling.” Brigid soothes. It’s strange, almost natural, for her to pet the girl’s hair, smoothing the flyaway locks that frame her face. “It will fade in time. Soon Rapture will be nothing more than a horrible dream. I promise you that.”

The hours crawl by. Without the fish to watch, the girls take to asking questions, questions Brigid is more than happy to answer. She explains why the sky is blue, what the clouds are, what makes the water move. When the girls’ curiosity starts to fade, she asks them questions instead.

She can hear the rumbling of their bellies, knows how hungry and thirsty they must be. It’s for their sake she distracts them.

If only she could go back. So much she would do differently. She’d remove the girls in groups, make sure every Little Sister makes it out. She would’ve trained the older ones, designated them leaders and taught them how to reprogram the bathysphere navigation.

She would’ve packed provisions. Food, water. Maybe some of the little ones’ favorite toys and games. And she definitely would’ve paid one of those maintenance workers to install a bathroom.

It only begged the question. _Had_ she done the right thing? Would they have been better off if she waited a week to put a plan into action? Or would that have been too late? She could only imagine what horrors Ryan had in mind for them—and the rest of Rapture. Then there was that Atlas fellow.

She shakes her head. No, she has to believe she did what was best, no matter how untrue that may be. She saved who she could, when she could—and that has to be good enough.

Brigid isn’t sure how long she sleeps, just that she wakes with a girl, a dark-headed girl named Mascha, tucked under her arm. Her shoulder aches now more than ever.

Some of the girls have already grown attached to Jack. Two older girls, an outgoing pair who introduce themselves as Caroline and Maria, managed to corral him into a game of pattycake. For the most part, he just stares at his playmate’s hands in confusion before the other girl guides his hands to the right places.

Finally the American shoreline comes into view. It’s the dead of night, so the beaches are empty. She takes stock of every little one in her care. Lucy, Mascha, Sandra, Missy, Caroline, Maria. Jack. Each one a person, each one depending on her.

Brigid Tenenbaum fisted her hands in the fabric of her skirt, vowing that with every ounce of her power, she would give these children a life they deserved.

**Author's Note:**

> btw i've got a [tumblr](http://president-homewrecker.tumblr.com/post/170243158376/hey-guys-i-have-a-really-really-awesomely) if you're interested


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